A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1984)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

A CHRISTMAS CAROL (12/17/1984)
Director: Clive Donner
Cast: George C. Scott, David Warner, Joanne Whalley, Edward Woodward, Susannah York
My Rating: 10/10

PLOT: In 19th-century London, a bitter old miser who rationalizes his uncaring nature learns real compassion when three spirits visit him on Christmas Eve.

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[SPOILER ALERTS! (For anyone whose souls are so dead they have never seen or read A Christmas Carol before…)]

The TV version of A Christmas Carol that first aired on CBS in 1984, starring the legendary George C. Scott as Ebenezer Scrooge, is the best version of Charles Dickens’ story that I’ve ever seen.

Oh, but let me tell you why.

Without exception, every other version I’ve ever seen, including live theatre versions, have made humor and lightness their prevailing mood. The musical Scrooge (1970) does have its share of dark moments towards the end, but the darkness is derailed by an unnecessary detour into cartoonish humor (while in the depths of Hell, no less). I’m not saying that making the story fun is wrong, necessarily. After all, it’s a Christmas story, with a strong message of redemption, so why shouldn’t it be a joyous experience? Right?

Ah…but this 1984 version takes a novel approach. It realizes what I’ve always known all along: that this is, above all, a ghost story with a Christmas message. And not all ghost stories are merry and bright.

Take the Ghost of Christmas Present, for example. In this version, he’s played by Edward Woodward, with a deep booming voice, an absurdly hairy chest, and hidden stilts making him upwards of 7 feet tall. His eyes twinkle, but something about his grin and hearty laughter gives you the sense of a cat toying with a mouse. There are moments when he berates poor Scrooge for his vices, and his voice becomes intense, and the smile vanishes from your face, and he tells Scrooge that his life may be worth less than MILLIONS of other souls like Tiny Tim, and…it’s quite a moment. It reminds you that this is a morality tale.

Another example, of course, would be the ever-popular Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. In every other version I’ve seen, this specter doesn’t speak, just points, usually with some kind of musical flourish. This version is no different, except the filmmakers ingeniously use an intensely creepy sound effect whenever this Ghost points or nods. It’s like someone pulling a violin bow across a huge piece of sheet metal. The effect is not comic or melodramatic. It’s deeply unsettling.

Of course, yet another reason to love this version is the towering performance from George C. Scott as the proto-Grinch, a man for whom Christmas is just an “excuse for picking a man’s pocket every twenty-fifth of December.” He injects moments of sly humor if you watch carefully (to the mute Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, he mutters, “You’re devilishly hard to have a conversation with”), but for the most part he plays the character completely straight with nary a grin to be seen except on the rarest occasions. This is an aspect missing from every other version. The prevailing wisdom seems to be to amplify and overdo the character of Scrooge, so he’s not as unlikable, I guess. Not this time. Scott creates a mean, heartless, ruthless businessman who would as soon bankrupt you as say two words to you. Even Albert Finney’s interpretation in Scrooge, as completely as he disappears into the role, is not as dark and merciless as George C. Scott’s version.

It’s that darkness that appeals to me here. Yes, yes, the ultimate scenes of happiness and redemption are all there – the boy on the street, Scrooge skipping around his room, “giddy as a drunken man”, the massive turkey – but I love this version because it remembers its roots. This is a gothic ghost story, and as far as I’m concerned, any version of A Christmas Carol would do well to remember that.

KLAUS (2019)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

KLAUS (2019)
Directors: Sergio Pablos, Carlos Martínez López
Cast: Jason Schwartzman, J.K. Simmons, Rashida Jones, Norm MacDonald, Joan Cusack
My Rating: 10/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 94% Certified Fresh

PLOT: The origin story of a certain jolly fellow in a red suit is told with beautifully enhanced hand-drawn animation in a film that deserves to be ranked with the best holiday classics.


I was not prepared for this.

Netflix’s Klaus from 2019 is one of the most beautiful, magical, and relentlessly original holiday films I’ve ever seen.  And heart-rending.  There are emotional beats in Klaus that rival anything in Pixar’s catalog, from the opening sequence of Up to the finale of Inside Out.

Short review: Go. Watch it now. Why are you still reading this?

Long review:

It starts an unspecified number of years ago somewhere in what appears to be Scandinavia, but it could be anywhere.  Or nowhere.  Jesper (Jason Schwartzman) is the ne’er-do-well son of the postmaster general, or something like that.  Determined to make a man out of his son, Jesper’s father assigns him a task: start a post office in a remote northern village on a desolate island and generate 6,000 letters in a one-year period or get cut off from his family’s substantial wealth.

The visuals in this forbidding village could warm the surrealist cockles of Tim Burton’s heart.  Rooftops aren’t so much pointed as sharpened.  Wide-eyed children make snowmen that would give Calvin nightmares.  A generations-long feud between two families on either side of town seems to be their only purpose for staying in town in the first place.

(So far, I’m thinking, okay, kinda weird, not sure where they’re going with this…is this scrawny dude gonna be Santa?)

One thing leads to another and Jesper travels to the other end of the island to visit the isolated house of someone known locally only as the woodsman.  Here he discovers shelves and shelves of handmade toys, gathering dust.  One of these toys finds its way into the hands of a child back in town who wrote a letter asking for a toy…

And here is where the story’s streak of inspired originality really took off.  Virtually every aspect of the legendary Santa Claus is given its own special origin story, from the reindeer to the sleigh to the concept of a Naughty List, right down to getting coal in your stocking instead of a present.

Aha, you say, but this has already been done!  I liked it better when it was called Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, on TV in 1970, with Fred Astaire, Mickey Rooney, and Keenan Wynn!

True enough.  But Klaus ups the ante by imagining this tale in a way I’ve never seen before.  I’m finding it difficult to express my admiration without giving away key aspects of the film that make it such a delight.  It’s all done so organically, so naturally, that something happens, and you think, “Well, of course they think reindeer can fly, after seeing that!”  I found myself laughing out loud due to the sheer ingenuity on display.

I think it’s a great companion piece to that much-maligned holiday classic, The Polar Express.  Both films approach the Santa legend from different angles, but neither one talks down to its intended audience.  Here is a mystical figure, possessed of magical abilities beyond mortal man.  Both films treat him with the kind of childlike reverence he deserves, and if he’s a little scary sometimes, well…he is always watching…

But none of that would be enough to achieve perfection on its own.  What makes this movie perfect are the heart-rending emotional beats that come as complete shocks to the viewer.  You may notice that I haven’t mentioned Mrs. Klaus, nor is she listed on IMDb.  There’s a very good reason for that, but you won’t get it out of ME.  You may also be asking yourself, well, if this hermit woodsman turns into Santa Claus, what’s the deal with the postman?  Great question!  Watch the movie and find out.

(Pay attention to the wind…that’s all I’ll say.)

These and other surprises pop up here and there, like searching through old clothes and finding folding money in the pockets.  The finale might make you cry like a baby if you’re not careful.  You’ve been warned.

Klaus is buried treasure, lost amid the hubbub of many other films from that year that have been forgotten.  This one does not deserve to be forgotten.  It belongs on any list of classic holiday films, old and new.  If you’ve made it this far in the review, congratulations, thanks for reading, but now it’s time to GO WATCH THIS MOVIE.

Now available on Netflix.

THE STING

By Marc S. Sanders

Find me a better combination of script, cast, direction, score, art direction and costume and I guarantee it’ll take you some time and effort.

The Sting, directed by George Roy Hill and written by David Ward, is the kind of movie where you uncover something new every time you watch it. It’s because the film is all in the minute details to assemble the beginning to the middle to the end. The film is wisely edited in step by step chapters; The Set Up, The Wire, The Shut Out and eventually on to the satisfying The Sting.

The audience is even set up but you’ll have to watch to see how. I dare not spoil it.

Cars, trains, drug stores, diners, a carousel, dames, gangsters, Bunko Cops, Grifters; all are elements needed for the best confidence men superbly played by Robert Redford and Paul Newman, along with a supporting cast like no other, Eileen Brennan, Harold Gould, Charles Durning, Ray Walston, Jack Kehoe and the best villain, or rather “mark,” Robert Shaw.

This is one of my favorite movies. When I first saw it, I was probably age 10 or 12. I understand next to nothing of what was going on. It was the music that drew me in first followed by the sharp suits designed by the legendary Edith Head. The movie’s script is its greatest asset but visually it is just as fun. The 1930s Chicago setting is a character in and of itself. Newman cheats beautifully at poker against a temperamental Shaw, and gets him!!! “You owe me 15 grand pal.” When I first saw it, I didn’t know what he was doing or how he did it. How did he switch hands? I was enamored with the hands that were dealt and the poker chips on the table, but I loved it when the better cheat won out.

The second iteration of the Hill/Newman/Redford trifecta (following “Butch…& Sundance…”) is just plain fun. It was the fun that earned it a Best Picture Oscar.

No other film has come close to duplicating it. Maybe the Clooney/Pitt/Damon version of “Ocean’s 11”? I don’t know. However, if you love that film, you owe it to yourself to watch “The Sting.”

The Sting is…”the quill!”

LIVE AND LET DIE

By Marc S. Sanders

I dunno. For me, the suave sophistication with the tongue in cheek persona of James Bond doesn’t mix well with the ‘70s cinematic themes of Blaxploitation and island voodoo rituals with snake bite human sacrifice. Live And Let Die was never a favorite of mine in the series. Still, it has some merits; even pioneering moments that set the standard for the next 20-25 years of 007. The gadgets are getting cooler (like a handy Rolex watch with a super magnet and buzz saw) and better, more natural looking action.

Harry Saltzman & Albert Broccoli present a film where the action scenes are the most authentic yet. A car chase with a double decker bus doesn’t feature the background film scroll seen in the rear window of an automobile, like prior films.

There’s a particularly long sequence featuring a boat chase through the Louisiana bayou. Great stunts and well edited footage here, although it features one of the most annoying characters in the whole series, redneck Sheriff GW Pepper (Clifton James, who always played the same role like in Superman II and even The A Team). This scene is an absolute blast of fun as Bond commands a speed boat while trying to evade a handful of bad guys in pursuit. Cars are wrecked. Boats are wrecked, and a bride to be wails aloud as her wedding is ruined. It’s just fun.

Roger Moore slips comfortably into the role of the Britain’s most celebrated secret agent. He’s handsome, for one thing, and his humor is dry enough that even in the face of death a pun is well delivered.

Yaphet Kotto plays Kananga, a far cry from the Cold War villains of Blofeld and Goldfinger. Turns out this guy just uses a couple of bars as a front for his heroin dealing enterprise while he dons a neighborhood crime boss image of “Mr. Big,” looking more like a villain of Shaft. He’s nevertheless good. Though he starts out the role quite subdued, he gleefully comes alive in the second half of the film when Bond intrudes on his secret lair.

Tom Mankiwietz’ script is lacking though. The pre title sequence gets me curious why three agents are inventively killed, but then the story mires itself in Kananga relying on Tarot card reading from the first virginal Bond girl, the High Priestess known as Solitaire. (Jane Seymour’s first screen role.) This offers no suspense or substance. We wait for cards to literally be turned over. Not exactly nail biting. Seymour is beautiful, but the intelligence and sex appeal of the character is flat.

There are also scarecrows and Caribbean island voodoo that are hardly threatening and belong in a horror film, not a Cold War era Bond adventure.

All of this weird material was twisting the series a little too far off course.

Live And Let Die does add a great henchman to 007’s rogue gallery; that of the imposing Tee Hee with enormous height and his steel lobster claw arm. He’s a fun bad guy that happily deserts Bond in a hungry alligator swamp.

Director Guy Hamilton’s third Bond film is not a total bust. It’s well cast in villains and Roger Moore is a perfect successor. Location shots of New Orleans and Jamaica (subbing for Kananga’s Caribbean island) are cool to see. The Harlem, New York footage really doesn’t belong here, though. It also has one of the best, most often played songs in the whole series, compliments of Paul McCartney & Wings. Again, it suffers however from a short sighted script.

Bond will be better served in missions yet to come.

FRENZY

By Marc S. Sanders

London is being terrorized by the necktie strangler.

In 1972’s Frenzy, Alfred Hitchcock hearkened back to his killer classic themes remembered from Psycho. Only this time he is much more macabre with his material. Frenzy is Hitchcock’s only R rated film and his first movie to show outright nudity. Naturally, it’s all pretty eye opening, and considering that the film’s killer is regarded as a “sex maniac,” necessary as well.

Richard Blaney (John Finch) is not doing so well. He’s broke and he’s just lost his barkeep job. Subsequent from that he turns to his ex wife Brenda (Barbara Leigh-Hunt), a successful marriage and friendship counselor for comfort. It does not help that Brenda’s secretary overhears Richard violently losing his temper. Nor does it do any good when he has an outburst while dining with Brenda in a crowded restaurant. Why, this could only make him look suspicious of a crime, and the infamous, serial necktie strangler has yet to be caught.

When Brenda turns up dead by means of a necktie around her throat, all accounts point to Richard. Once again, Hitchcock’s protagonist is the Everyman caught up in an unwelcome conspiracy.

Frenzy is thankfully like many of Hitchcock’s best films. It gets straight to the point. Just as the film begins, the naked body of a dead girl floats up from The River Thames. Then it follows through with Richard and introduces likely suspects and or villains including Richard’s friend Robert Rusk (Barry Foster) and his bar waitress co-worker Baba Milligan (Anna Massey)

Hitch goes more horrifying than he might have had the liberty to do so a decade prior to this release. The necktie strangler’s rape and murder of the first victim is quite graphic and disturbing. This is a deranged individual and his victim is rendered helpless.

What keeps viewers interested in a good Hitchcock yarn is the suspense he manufactures for the one who is blamed, as well as for the killer. Hitchcock doesn’t dwell on mystery. Rather, he focuses on what his principal characters are going to do next, now that they are swept up in intrigue. The strangler continues his killing spree but overlooks one thing that could implicate him. The man who is blamed seems to get little help from anyone. Richard is in quite a pickle after all. As well, how will these two people encounter one another to wrap up the storyline?

Humor also comes through quite nicely with Chief Inspector Timothy Oxford (Alec McCowen) who is blessed with a loving wife who relishes analyzing the gruesome details of his investigation while preparing dinner time meals that look awfully worse than the corpses the Inspector encounters; quail with raisins for example. To look at her concoctions will certainly make you wince. It’s great side humor for the suspense at play.

A film like Frenzy hardly explores dimension in its characters. Many of Hitchcock’s films never get weighed down with too much material. The stories he directs are lean, only focusing on the central plot at play. The fun is in the disturbing angles he uses like a woman’s outstretched hand or frozen expression after succumbing to strangulation. Overhead shots of a man imprisoned in a small room can also be jarring. He keeps you engaged as tightly as the fingers of a dead body gripping a significant piece of evidence.

Films like Frenzy or Psycho cannot be made today. There are too many advances in technology and science to undo the developments of simple, yet grossly disturbing stories like this. DNA evidence and cell phones would wrap up any of these plot lines in five minutes. It’s fortunate that we can still transport ourselves to the period when these tales of suspense were originally developed. It doesn’t make it easy for the innocent man, the victims or the killer. I wonder how Hitch would approach today’s conveniences of modern science. If anything, he’d likely make his signature cameo on the wallpaper of someone’s iPhone. Nevertheless, I’m sure he’d find a way to continue to build his suspense. He had such an eye for his camera, his captions and his edits.

Frenzy is a demonstration of classic Hitchcockian thrills.

THE CANDIDATE

By Marc S. Sanders

A politician’s career isn’t being elected. A politician’s career is getting elected. Once it is all over, what does the politician do now?

I’m not sure I understand why Jeremy Larner’s script won the Oscar in 1972; only because I didn’t gather much from this Robert Redford star vehicle. What exactly was the point of what I was watching? Redford plays Bill McKay, an idealistic lawyer recruited to run for the California senate on a Democratic ticket.

He’s sure to lose and I guess he’s okay with that because it’s acknowledged that way early on, and yet he just follows through with the campaign. He’s a kid compared to his seasoned Republican incumbent opponent. So he’s got that to deal with, and he’s remorsefully living in the unwanted shadow of his father, a former good ol’ boy governor. He also occasionally brushes past a girl that follows his campaign. Bill is happily married. Sounds like a good set up, right? Maybe it is. Yet I’m not sure any of this is the set up of the film. There is rarely any conversations in The Candidate. Hardly any dramatic pauses occur either. Nary a scene with his wife. The televised debate midway through is generic cliche really. One good moment occurs when the Republican candidate steps on Bill’s toes during a threatening brush fire. Now here’s some conflict. Now we’re cooking. Except…we’re not. The film returns to its established theme from earlier. For some reason in the last half of the film, it throws two or three punchlines at you, and…well, I guess it’s a comedy now.

The Candidate fills a majority of its two hours with McKay doing a lot of handshaking, baby holding, celebrity meets (Hi Natalie Wood!) and autograph signing. When that’s not happening, we are treated to repetitive close ups of members of his campaign and voters. I felt like I should have known these people. Did I fall asleep during their big introduction in the film, or were those scenes deleted from the finished product? Bill doesn’t say much except to make generic statements that no voter would ever disagree with. That’s okay, I guess, yet really it’s just boring. None of this packs any punch.

Larner was a speechwriter for Eugene McCarthy in 1968, and Redford recruited him to write and tailor this script for him to produce and star, in response to his own dismay with the political climate at the time. Maybe The Candidate is supposed to be narrated in a documentarian sense but even if that’s the case, it fell short for me. Scenes here seem about as interesting as someone who unwraps a stick of gum and chews it.

Perhaps the Oscar was merited due to the political climate at the time. Redford’s character told audiences what they wanted to hear and magically Larner’s screenplay is now brilliant. If that’s the case, then I guess The Candidate is now dated. There’s no way this film outshines other political films like Wag The Dog, Primary Colors, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, or from what I hear Bulworth (never saw it).

The Candidate carries no drama, no comedy, no shock value. I’d say no message either, but the unexpected ending (unexpected only because I didn’t know the end scene was actually the end scene) finally told me something that I laboriously waited a long two hours for. The wait wasn’t worth it.

CABARET

By Marc S. Sanders

Is it possible for a musical to be disturbing? Maybe Bob Fosse’s Cabaret favors that argument.

Liza Minnelli won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1972 for her portrayal of Sally Bowles, a carefree, happy go lucky performer at the underground Kit Kat Club located in Berlin, 1931. She is the lead attraction among a company of dancers doing a different kind of stage vaudeville with its colorful emcee played amazingly by Joel Grey, also an Oscar winner.

The musical numbers are outlandish with caked on makeup and outfits that could make Victoria’s Secret seem like a children’s shop. I gathered from the film that Fosse, who choreographed the numbers as well, offered up the escape of life first, before showing the harsh reality of Berlin in its historical context.

Sally and the Emcee’s performances are first on hand, depicted as silly and showstopping. Thereafter, Sally encounters an English gentleman named Brian Roberts (Michael York) who is a professor of English study attempting to complete his doctorate. As Sally and Brian become closer as friends first, he must reluctantly admit to Sally that he’s a better bed companion with a man than with a woman. Sally doesn’t understand why he didn’t say that in the first place as she attempts to come on to him.

Herein lies the dilemma many faced as the Nazi party was gaining traction in Germany. How necessary is it to hide your true natures to preserve your life? Sally’s underground lifestyle at the club clouds her vision of what’s gradually happening in the world. Nevertheless, they eventually develop a relationship as Brian appears to be bisexual, more specifically.

A side story concerns Brian & Sally’s relationship with a baron named Maximillan (Helmut Griem), who will wine and dine them at his estate only to later abandon the respective relationships he sets up with them to more or less make them feel as cheap as prostitutes. I wasn’t sure what to gather from this extension, however. The irony is that unbeknownst to Sally and Brian they have both been sleeping with Max. Eventually, Sally reveals she’s pregnant but does not know who the father may be, Brian or Max, and an abortion is considered.

An additional side story concerns a wealthy Jewish German heiress named Natalia who falls in love with a German Jew named Fritz living under the guise of a Protestant.

Cabaret is a loose adaptation of The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood (the Brian character) and his experience with stage performer Jean Ross (the Sally character). Isherwood’s stories gradually formed into different iterations of stage plays and short stories before making it to Broadway and Fosse’s celebrated film.

Though Fosse apparently took some questionable liberties and departures from Isherwood’s writings, I think it depicts the personal struggles of love and self identity while the world around them is quickly changing into a scary reality where your own self identity could get you killed.

Fosse gives terrifying glimpses of how the Nazi party seeps it’s way into a decadent Berlin of underground showmanship. Though apparently Berlin really wasn’t so decadent as the film has you believe. Ross and Isherwood have gone on record describing Berlin was a more destitute and poor environment, actually.

In Fosse’s film, a Nazi youth is seen early on being kicked out of the Kit Kat Club. A few minutes later, the night club manager is being beaten in an alley. Fosse juxtaposes scary moments like this against the silly debauchery depicted on stage. It’s as if the Gypsies, homosexuals and Jews in the area are unaware of the evil practice that is gradually taking over outside.

Soon, Fosse makes the swastika more apparent in the streets with propaganda handouts. Most telling is when a young boy is seen at an outdoor beer garden gathering singing a number selfishly entitled “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.” Fosse is frighteningly effective at showing this boy from the neck up. Eventually, he moves the camera down to reveal the boy’s swastika wrapped around his sleeve. The song which seemed to champion beauty and nature now evolves into a march of grandstanding fascism. It completely shocked me. Just as people like Brian and Fritz are reluctant to reveal their backgrounds, both sexually and religiously, the Nazi party is proud to announce their mindset in a converse manner. By the end of the film, the audience at the Kit Kat Club more predominantly shows Nazis in the audience as opposed to just the one shown in the beginning of the film. Hatred has spread its disease.

While Minnelli shines in her role, her showstopping moment really comes at the end when she dangles her carefree attitude while belting out the title song with “Life Is A Cabaret.” Along with Joel Grey’s Emcee closing out the film with the “Finale,” this musical goes against the grain of most musicals’ cheerful close outs or romantic theatrics. Fosse’s mirror image of the Nazi party taking in Sally and Emcee’s performances are chilling. We sense the characters’ time is at an end and wisely the film runs its closing credits among frightening silence with the cold, blurred images of Nazi soldiers staring right at us.

I had never seen the film of Cabaret until now, but I had attended two different stage productions; neither of which I liked. Bob Fosse’s film seems more clear with its content than I ever got from a stage performance. Perhaps it is because the Oscar winning art direction is more apparent than a stage set. We can see the bustling of Berlin change amid a political climate that at first is not taken so seriously. As hurtful and harrowing the relationships of love between Brian with Sally and then with Max, as well as Fritz and Natasha are, none of this will eventually compare to the upcoming demise for Berlin.

As Miguel noted in our recent podcast that focused on musicals, Cabaret won the most Oscars without winning Best Picture (losing to The Godfather). It’s clear how deserving it was of its accolades. The musical numbers are very engaging but the fear of fascism is well developed too. So there is a roller coaster of emotions to absorb from Fosse’s film. I believe in that podcast I noted that Francis Ford Coppola won Best Director. I now realize I was wrong. It was in fact Bob Fosse who took home that prize, and it’s truly evident how deserving that honor was for him.

Again, while I’ve yet to find a stage production I’ve liked, I was terribly moved by the film. Cabaret, the film from 1972, is a sensational and frightening production.

HOUSE OF GUCCI (2021)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Jared Leto, Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Salma Hayek
My Rating: 5/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 61%

PLOT: An outsider marries into the Gucci family, and her unbridled ambition triggers a downward spiral of betrayal, revenge, and violence.


Watching Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci was a curious experience.  I could see glimmers of a great entertainment through bars of slow pacing, a meandering story, and unanswered questions.  The performances are top-notch, no question, but they are at the service of a movie that doesn’t seem interested in meeting their level of passion.

Inspired by true events, the movie tells the story of Patrizia Reggiani, a young woman from humble beginnings who meets and eventually marries Maurizio (Adam Driver), one of the heirs to the Gucci fashion empire.  Patrizia is played with fury and fire by Lady Gaga, who seems destined for another Oscar nomination.  Her character is portrayed as a latter-day Lady Macbeth, someone who sees through the deceptions of her new husband’s business associates and manipulates people and events for her family’s benefit.  In true tragic form, her ambitions threaten to derail everything she loves.

Adam Driver plays Maurizio as a rather slow fellow who disinherits himself so he can marry Patrizia but finds a way back into the fold via his uncle, Aldo (Al Pacino), who sees Maurizio as a good substitute for his own disappointing son, Paolo.  Paolo is played by Jared Leto, in another of the film’s performances destined for Oscar recognition.  Buried underneath flawless makeup and a skin cap, Leto portrays Paolo as a self-deluded buffoon whose fashion designs aren’t so much daring as unfortunate.  (Apparently, pastels and brown were never meant to mix…who knew?)

I mention the performances because they are the sole highlights of the film.  For two-and-a-half hours, these performances play against a backdrop of one dreary scene after another. Sure, the performances are fun to watch, but at the end of the day, if they don’t have anything interesting to say, it gets a little boring.  We get behind-the-scenes intrigues and betrayals that seem to owe more than a little to earlier crime epics by Scorsese and Coppola, but there was nothing to get really excited about.  Nothing grabbed me.

Ridley Scott’s films are normally way more imaginative than this.  They look better.  The cinematography is usually more inspired.  I’m not talking about his action or sci-fi epics, either.  I mean his small-scale triumphs like Matchstick Men or Thelma & Louise.  What happened here?  Was he not inspired by the story?  There is great material here, more than enough back-stabbing and lying and cheating to go around.  Yet everything is subdued, and plods, and inspires more yawns than anything else.  I didn’t experience any kind of excitement or passion one way or the other for any of the characters, or for the story.  It just didn’t make me care.

By the time House of Gucci is over, we’ve seen betrayals, marital infidelity, divorce, back-stabbing business deals, sex, and murder.  I have a friend who wrote a stage play that has almost all of those things, and it was WAY more entertaining than this film.

HAPPINESS (1998)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Todd Solondz
Cast: Jane Adams, Jon Lovitz, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Dylan Baker, Lara Flynn Boyle, Louise Lasser, Ben Gazzara, Camryn Manheim, Molly Shannon
My Rating: 8/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 81% Certified Fresh

PLOT: Various characters, some linked, some not, struggle with the search for happiness in their lives.


A little history:

Todd Solondz’s film Happiness was so controversial that the Sundance Film Festival actually refused to screen it.  It was originally financed by October Films, but upon seeing the final product, October’s owner, Seagrams, dropped the film like a hot potato.  Happiness initially received an NC-17 rating, which would have immediately limited distribution opportunities, as well as created advertising difficulties.  Therefore, it was released unrated, uncut, and unaltered.

I remember reading about this movie years ago in Roger Ebert’s four-star review; he eventually labeled it one of the top ten movies of 1998.  I got curious, so, since this was in the days before Netflix – and I’m not sure Netflix would have made it available anyway – I snapped up the first DVD copy I could find and watched it.

And…um…oh my.  There are dark comedies (Pulp Fiction), and there are Dark Comedies (Dr. Strangelove).   And then there are DARK COMEDIES.  Happiness is a DARK COMEDY.

Remember that scene in Pulp Fiction when Marvin gets shot in the back of the car?  Remember the blood that covered the rear windshield and the blood and pieces of flesh and skull that were peppered all over John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson?  Horrific, right?  But it was such a shocking moment that I remember laughing hysterically for the first few seconds after the incident, so that I missed the next few lines of dialogue from Vincent and Jules.

Happiness is like that.  You’re watching scenes of emotional devastation, but the circumstances under which they’re happening are…kinda funny.  Or at least funny in that shocked kind of way.  Your brain can’t quite believe what your eyes and ears are feeding it, and so you laugh.  At least, I did when I recently re-watched it with my girlfriend last night.  She didn’t do a lot of laughing, for the record.

The plot: We meet three sisters, Joy (Jane Adams), Helen (Lara Flynn Boyle), and Trish (Cynthia Stevenson).  Joy is an aspiring 30-something songwriter who still lives at home and has just broken up with her boyfriend in a scene that’s right at the top of the film and sets the appropriate mood: somewhere between funny and discomfort.  Helen is a moderately successful writer who has written a bestselling collection of poems about childhood rape.  Cynthia is a mother of two boys, married to a successful psychiatrist named Bill (Dylan Baker).  She seems to be the happiest of the three sisters, but she’s that kind of person who says things like, “You know, we all thought you would never amount to much, but NOW look at you!”

Cynthia’s husband, Bill, has a dark secret, one which I will not divulge here, but it’s revealed fairly early in the film.  He is a man so desperately in search of happiness that his efforts to fulfill his desires dance on the edge of farce.  He is so compelled to be happy (or at least what passes for happy in his mind) that he is, at one point, reduced to, um, “interfering with himself” in the backseat of his own car in broad daylight, risking discovery at every second by passers-by.

I haven’t even mentioned the part where he drugs the tuna fish sandwich.  Or ditches the PTA meeting for an impromptu “rendezvous.”  Or has a conversation with his 11-year-old son about why length doesn’t matter.  But enough about Bill for now.

Helen, the author, feels like a faker because she was, in fact, never raped as a child, so her happiness and success is built on lies.  She wishes her work could have more immediacy or legitimacy.  Then she could be REALLY happy.  And she might have a way: Daryl (Philip Seymour Hoffman), her next-door neighbor, is so obsessed with her that he finds it impossible to talk to her in person.  So he starts making obscene phone calls to her while he’s at work.  He gets the shock of his life when, after one call, she star-69s him and says, “I want to see you.”

And Joy…poor, ironically-named Joy.  Her trials and tribulations in the movie are more relatable than the others I’ve mentioned previously, so I’ll leave them alone for now.

Now, the subject matter of the movie has sparked controversy, as I mentioned earlier.  Are we, as an audience, expected to empathize with these characters?  Speaking as a guy who has had his fair share of heartbreaking crushes, I’ve gotta say I did empathize a bit with Daryl, the phone pervert.  I certainly don’t condone his behavior, but I was achingly aware of his thought processes as he stood in the elevator next to the object of his desire, desperate to talk to her, certain that she represents true happiness, but eternally unable to do anything about it.

I also identified a little with Kristina, played by Camryn Manheim.  She lives a couple of doors down from Daryl and is always knocking on his door to deliver tidbits of news.  (“Our doorman was found bludgeoned to death in his apartment this morning…supposedly his penis was missing.”)  She is clearly crushing on Daryl, but Daryl is oblivious in the face of his own crush.  Their relationship, or lack thereof, pays off in a scene set in a diner during which a secret is revealed that sees the Marvin scene from Pulp Fiction and raises.

But what about Bill, Cynthia’s husband with the dark secret?  While I can relate to characters like Kristina and Daryl and Joy, what is this distasteful nonsense doing in this movie?  Let’s make no bones about it: Bill is a monster, enslaved to desires he can’t understand; he can only bend to their will.  Does that make him an object of sympathy?  SHOULD that make him an object of sympathy?  There’s an excruciating scene where Bill’s son asks him very, VERY specific questions about his compulsion, and to our amazement, instead of shying away from them, Bill tearfully answers them honestly and directly, including that last question that I had completely forgotten was in the movie.  Does this honesty make Bill honorable?  Previous scenes have shown that Bill is always honest with his son, and he makes the decision not to break that streak, even when the answers are shameful and, probably for some, gag-inducing.

My take: Bill’s crimes and desires have made him irredeemable, in my book.  But…BUT…he did the right thing by being honest with his son.  In that ONE sense, I have to give the character props.  If I were in his place, I’m not sure I would have done the same thing.

Geez, I just realized I haven’t even mentioned another subplot about the parents of the three sisters who have relocated to Florida and are undergoing a separation (NOT a divorce!), even though they’re still living in the same house.  Eh, I’ll leave that one alone, too.

So anyway.  Whenever I read a review that gets this long-winded, I always find myself asking the question, “Yeah, but is it any GOOD?”

Yes, it is.  It’s literate, compelling, and funny, but you may hate yourself for laughing afterwards.  That’s the genius of the movie.  It creates these situations that you laugh at, but when you try to describe the scene to your friends, they just stare at you in abject horror.

(I give it an 8 instead of a higher score just on the basis of the “icky” feeling I get when watching some of the scenes.  You’ve been warned.)

LA LA LAND (2016)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Damien Chazelle
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, John Legend
My Rating: 9/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 91% Certified Fresh

PLOT: While navigating their careers in Los Angeles, a jazz pianist (Gosling) and an actress (Stone) fall in love while attempting to reconcile their aspirations for the future.


SPOILER ALERTS! MULTIPLE SPOILER ALERTS!


La La Land was greeted by the American public in one of two ways.  There was no middle of the road.  You either loved it or hated it.

Critics loved it.  It broke records at the Golden Globes that year and was the odds-on favorite to win Best Picture at the Oscars (Moonlight took the prize instead, and deservedly so).

When it came to the viewing public, people were immediately divided into opposing camps, with each trying to convince the other they were wrong.  “It’s homage!” cried one camp.  “It’s derivative and sad!” cried the other.

Me?  I’m part of the “loved-it” camp.  And after re-watching it tonight, for the first time since seeing it in theatres, I have no plans to change my mind.

I once wrote that there is no movie more in love with “old Hollywood” than The Artist.  Well, La La Land is more in love with classic movie musicals, specifically, than any other modern movie in recent memory.  It opens with an astonishing musical number, “Another Day of Sun”, set on a Los Angeles overpass.  In a breathtaking feat of choreography and cinematography, scores of dancers perform nifty moves in and around a traffic jam, incorporating a live band inside what looks like a UPS truck, in one single take…or at least what LOOKS like one single take.  Could be some CG in there.  Who cares?  It’s awesome, and it sets the tone right away: this will be like one of those old musicals where people break into song and dance without warning.  You can stay where you are or you can leave now, but this is what’s happening.

After that, we settle in to a tried and true story of boy (Sebastian [Ryan Gosling], a jazz pianist who wants to start his own jazz club) meets girl (Mia [Emma Stone], an aspiring actress looking for a break).  This part of the story was old when Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland did it in countless other films, so yeah, I get it.  I can see why some folks called it derivative.

But that criticism neatly dismisses the underlying subplot about the Old vs. the New.  Sebastian desperately wants to start a jazz club that plays the greats – Monk, Coltrane, Davis – because, as he says in a passionate speech to Mia, jazz is dying.  Nobody wants to hear it anymore.  It’s old.  (He decries a nearby club that combines jazz, samba, and tapas, or some such nonsense.)  “They worship everything and value nothing,” he laments.

But Keith, a fellow musician (played by John Legend) tries to get him to see sense.  (“How are you gonna be a revolutionary if you’re such a traditionalist?”)  History is written by the people who strike out in a new direction.  Sebastian himself uses this philosophy with Mia, who has gotten tired of auditioning for the same teachers and doctors and coroners over and over again.  He tells her to do something different if you’re tired of the same old/same old.  She takes his advice and starts writing a one-woman play about her life.

And here’s where it gets cool.  While the characters in the movie are urging each other to embrace new concepts, La La Land still has one foot firmly in the past, i.e., the grand musical traditions of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse, etcetera.  Two later numbers stick out in my mind.  One is a twilight duet between Sebastian and Mia, shot on location in the Hollywood Hills when the sky is that perfect shade of somewhere-between-pink-and-purple.  They sing a little and then they do a beautiful dance together, but they’ve just met, so they’re careful to dance ALONE together…watch it and you’ll see what I mean.  Right out of Vincente Minnelli.  (Let’s be clear…Gosling and Stone are not exactly Fred and Ginger, but they do a damn sight better than I could do myself, so I give them props.)

Another number with classic-musical overtones is set during the first giddy months of their relationship.  With little or no singing (can’t remember which), we follow Sebastian and Mia as they tick off Los Angeles landmarks, finishing at the famous Griffith Observatory.  They enter the planetarium, and in a gloriously giddy moment of cinematic fantasy, they rise into the air and dance among the stars and galaxies before falling perfectly into their seats and sharing a kiss.  I no longer remember what I did the first time watching this movie, but this time around, I watched that whole sequence with a goofy grin on my face.  If you can’t enjoy watching people dancing in the stars, well…

At one point, Sebastian tells someone, “You say ‘romantic’ like it’s a dirty word.”  I like that.  This movie is, above all, romantic, in spite of how it ends.  It’s romantic in the sense that it revels in the unreasonable, illogical hope that everything will work out okay in the end.  Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still dream.  (There’s even a song about this exact thing, sung by Emma Stone in a sequence near the end that oozes romance and heartbreak.)

But all of this is nothing…nothing…compared to the emotional roller-coaster of the last thirty minutes of the movie.  It’s here that La La Land gets all serious in the middle of the fluff, because it explores the nature of success and what is necessary to achieve it.  Sebastian is touring with a band that pays well…but it’s not exactly a jazz ensemble.  Mia is just about ready to give up acting…until a casting agent gives her an opportunity to star in a movie shooting in Paris for four months.  These two characters, for whom the audience has been rooting for the previous 90 minutes, are on a downward spiral, and the only way to save their relationship would be for one or the other to completely give up on their dreams.  But neither of them would ask that of the other.  So they go their separate ways.

WHAT?  After all this they don’t wind up together?  Well…what would you have preferred?  An ending that awkwardly keeps them together, with him, say, playing jazz in a French club while she shoots a movie in Paris during the day?  Enjoying success together?  Having kids?  Sure, that kind of ending is POSSIBLE.  (In fact, in one of the many highlights of the movie, you even get a tease of what that might have been like.)  But, hey.  Isn’t that just the traditionalist way of looking at things?  Why not strike out in a different direction?  Do something no one’s doing.  End your movie where each character gets what they’ve always wanted their entire lives…even if that means they don’t get each other.

Boy, that last sentence sounds harsh.  But that’s what this movie’s about, and I think the film’s detractors simply couldn’t get past the grand tradition that demands the two leads wind up together.  They wanted Singin’ in the Rain, and instead they got the musical equivalent of The Remains of the Day.  (Maybe not quite that extreme, but I trust the point is made.)

ANYWAY.  Like I said, I just finished watching this a couple of hours ago, and I am no less convinced of its greatness.  Even though it’s a wrench watching their relationship head towards the rocks, the movie makes up for it at the end with half an hour of glorious, emotional catharsis that left me feeling wrung out, but in a good way.  It’s not quite a tragedy, but not quite a comedy.  Like life itself, it falls somewhere in between.